WLS is a selection of links to blogs, news outlets, and cool little sites on the Web that relate to science, reason, skepticism, atheism, the fringes and borderlands of science, memes relating to science or skepticism, and anything that catches my eye or which I’m deluded enough to think might arouse the interest of you, my perspicacious readers. WPS is published weekly each Thursday on the Call.

This is pretty cool… I’ve been tagged by fellow blogger windupmyskirt to answer a list of eleven questions, only to spread teh bloggy-love myself by tagging eleven other victims — er, I mean bloggers — with my own questions!

MuaHaHaHaHa! *ahem*

I’ll begin by answering here:

1. Why did you start your blog?

I needed an outlet for my ideas, and thought the best way to vet them was to put them on an open, public forum so that they could be tested and improved. I also that it would be a good learning experience so that I could better myself as a person and skeptic. The fact that it’s allowed me to meet so many awesome people online is a big plus too. Skepticism has helped me out tremendously, and I see blogging as a way to pay back that debt.

2. Who is your favorite actor/actress?

My favorite actor is Christopher Eccleston, whose gritty and edgy role as Nine in the Doctor Who reboot was just, as Nine would say, “fantastic.” I’m also kind of partial to Indian actresses Amala Paul and Vidya Balan. I tend to favor actors and actresses who are comfortable in their own skins, and who show it when they perform.

3. Name your favorite band/musician?

Right now, my favorites are Enigma, Enya, and Jon Boswell, who does the Symphony of Science mixes using video clips and the voices of scientists and skeptics, past and present, to show the utter coolness of science and reason.

4. What is your favorite TV show?

Hands down, I’d say Doctor Who, both the Tom Baker years of the older series and the reboot with Eccleston, Tennant and Smith as Nine, Ten and Eleven. At one time I was a big Robotech fan, until I actually learned some physics and found out that Zentraedi were silly — and physically impossible as described — Square-cube law, anyone?

5. Who is your favorite scientist?

That’s a tough one, but if it’s scientists past, I’d say Carl Sagan and Ike Newton, and if scientists present, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michio Kaku and Stephen Hawking would rank about evenly on the awesome scale.

6. Name your favorite author?

I have four I’d rank together: Carl Sagan, Martin Gardner, Harlan Ellison, and Isaac Asimov, all of whom influenced my evolution as a writer, skeptic and science-junkie. Gardner’s books on pseudoscience and mathematics made a big impression on me in terms of my interests.

7. What do you do with your free-time when you are not online?

I either make fractals, or sit down in a comfy spot in my room or a reading desk at the local library to read and/or study. I also play tabletop role-playing games, like Steve Jackson’s GURPS, when my friends pay a visit. Sometimes I watch videos, whether television episodes or my Teaching Company course lectures.

8. If you had to live in another country, which country would you choose, and why?

I would say India. As an emerging economic power, India is rising quickly in the science and technology department. I love the culture(s), the people, and the history, my favorite period being that of the Gupta dynasty.

Any culture brilliant enough to invent the beautiful concepts of zero and infinity, and the decimal system of mathematics is tops in my book. That, and their traditional architecture is absolutely magnificent, easily the equal of anything in the West.

9. What three words best describe you?

Driven. Curious. Detached.

10. What is your biggest guilty pleasure?

Pleasure? What’s that?

Seriously, though, it’s one that makes me kind of annoying in face-to-face encounters…I like to argue, preferably productively, more like a debate or discussion than mere bickering and quarreling.

Those last two annoy even me and achieve nothing.

As David Hume put it, “Truth springs from argument amongst friends.”

11. If you were throwing a dinner party, and could invite any 10 people (living or dead) who would you invite?

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Your Eldritch Host

I'm a carbon-based bio-organism belonging to a particularly powerful and potentially self-destructive species native to a speck of dirt orbiting an average but temperamental yellow star in a backwater spiral arm of an insignificant galaxy.

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